I just choose the lifestyle I want first, before I choose my work. Lifestyle first means that I turned down entry-level bullshit jobs in favor of playing professional beach volleyball. Not because I was dying to have all my friends think I was a lunatic, but because I couldn’t believe people expect you to do mindless work after earning a college degree.

And just to prove how the old-school, old-boys network has no place in the modern workplace, they offered her this advice:

Here’s what my boss’s boss’s boss said: “You should write for Lifestyles. That is more women oriented.”

Nice.

Disappointing, but not unexpected. It just goes to further prove the theory that practically every corporation remains home to such deep-seeded, flawed, and ridiculous mores and cultural crapola, that it’s going to be a terribly long road before we see anything change, if ever.

6 Responses to Yahoo! fires Brazen Careerist Penelope Trunk

Come On, do you think that was the Whole conversation that Yahoo had with her? Really.. Write for lifestyles it is more women oriented???

Nah, this is more than likely so taken out of context – as is the reason that she was booted off. But, with Penelope, everything is usually so over inflated and full of Penelope, that it makes one wonder what truly is real or what is fiction

I’m sorry, but you obviously haven’t read her Finance columns or understand that Finance columns are meant to discuss just that, Finance. Her career advice was horrible and reflected what a recent grad expected out of the workplace instead of how things really ran. Yahoo is lucky they finally got rid of her because had they not, they were likely to get hit for a class action lawsuit by readers who either lost jobs because of following her “advice” or readers who lost chances at getting hired for following that same “advice”. Minus a 2nd rate website, she is going to have a hard time hitting the big time again after airing her dirty laundry about being fired by Yahoo on her “professional” blog that is linked to by all of her articles/columns.

I wasn’t privy to her contract or the stipulations thereof. So, I really don’t know why she was hired or what she was expected to write.

However, I have to assume that given her m.o., Yahoo! knew exactly what they were getting when they signed her to a contract.

But, again, that’s only my assumption. Perhaps, you are more in the know than I.

As I’ve mentioned several times before, I think people should read Penelope not for the goal of blindly following her “advice” like sheep, but because she so often comes at the subject matter from such an obtuse angle.

She may make you angry, but she always makes you think.

I’m going to stop there before I get hit with a class action lawsuit by readers who are bored.

I didn’t think much of her finance column, but who really knows that much anyway– at least her columns aren’t laughably unrealistic to anyone outside the NY bubble or dry. But, there I was a random reader who stumbled across an ignorant comment by a disgruntled (former) employee on Yahoo’s “10 Most Anticipated Movies of 2008” –that turned out to be written by the lovely “brazen” Penelope. Somewhere along or between those lines probably lies the true reason for the firing.
But hey, you want edgy, you know what you’re getting, especially if you’re Yahoo.

As a manager of several Gen Y employees, I can say Penelope Trunk’s columns rang very true to me. I have learned a great deal from her columns. Her insight into this group of young workers has helped me to bridge the considerable gap between a late 4osomething and the increase crop of 20somethings joining my workplace. I’ve wondered why Yahoo placed her column within the Yahoo Finance section. Probably would have done better in another channel within the Yahoo universe. Either way, it’s a shame because her insight has been beneficial for me and I hope to read her columns somewhere more fitting in the future.